Hide your ra­zors, ladies

AL­MOST half of men ad­mit to trim­ming or shav­ing their leg hair – an eye­brow rais­ing ad­mis­sion, even for a gen­er­a­tion of sporno­sex­ual man­sca­pers.

Male hair trim­ming that rarely con­cerns body hair south of the bor­der, un­less you’re a pro­fes­sional swim­mer or cy­clist – but these days av­er­age Joes ev­ery­where are tak­ing ra­zors to their hairy pins.

Sur­vey­ing their Face­book fol­low­ers, Men’s Health found that while the ma­jor­ity of men are not com­pletely shav­ing their legs, a sur­pris­ing 15% are, while a fur­ther 33% ad­mit­ted: “I don’t shave clean, but I do use a trim­mer to cut it down”. That’s nearly half of the men polled that are tack­ling their leg hair in some way or form – but why?

Fol­low­ing the fruition of the met­ro­sex­ual, its ini­tia­tor Mark Simp­son has coined the next stage in its evo­lu­tion as the sporno­sex­ual; a group of men who strive to look like sports­men or porn stars. Per­haps this ten­dency to­wards smooth-shaven buff­ness is

On the back of its ini­tial sur­vey, sis­ter pub­li­ca­tion Women’s Health jumped on the bushy band­wagon ask­ing their Face­book fol­low­ers, “What do you think about guys shav­ing their legs?” The re­sults showed that nearly 30% of women “like a man who trims leg hair down” and 22% “love a man with clean shaven legs”. That’s more than half the women sur­veyed that re­sponded to legscap­ing pos­i­tively, but it’s a di­vi­sive sub­ject.

One Red­dit poll which pro­posed the same ques­tion proved that while the num­ber of men seek­ing leg hair re­moval is ris­ing, some women just don’t like it.

“I think I’d be weirded out by an­other set of smooth legs touch­ing me” one user said, while an­other re­sponded: “I think I’d re­ally need a func­tional rea­son, be­cause I like hair on my men.”

The in­ter­net is awash with guides on how men can achieve the ul­ti­mate slip­pery smooth physique but does any­body truly care?

Just as with women, body hair re­moval is a per­sonal de­ci­sion so if you’re a guy and like your legs to feel su­per soft and shiny then keep on keep­ing on. – dpa